Review by AllTheBestFights.com: 2018-05-19, great performance by both boxers: Gary Russell Jr vs Jo Jo Diaz gets three stars.The former Olympian and Wbc Fw champion Gary Russell Jr entered this fight with a professional record of 28-1-0 (17 knockouts) and he is ranked as the No.3 featherweight in the world (currently the #1 in this division is Leo Santa Cruz). Russell suffered his only loss when he faced Vasyl Lomachenko in 2014 (via majority decision, Lomachenko vs Russell), after this fight he has won four consecutive bouts beating Patrick Hyland (Russell vs Hyland) and Oscar Escandon in his last two (Gary Russell Jr vs Oscar Escandon).
His opponent, the undefeated former Olympian Joseph Diaz, has a perfect boxing record of 26-0-0 (14 knockouts) and he entered as the No.8 in the same weight class. Between 2017 and 2018 ‘Jo Jo’ has won over Manuel Avila (Diaz vs Avila), Rafael Rivera (Joseph Diaz vs Rafael Rivera) and Victor Terrazas (Joseph Diaz vs Victor Terrazas). Russell vs Diaz is valid for the WBC World featherweight title (held by Russell). Watch the video and rate this fight!
Date: 2018-05-19
Where: MGM National Harbor, Oxon Hill, Maryland, USA
Division: featherweight (126 lbs, 57.2 kg)
Title: WBC World featherweight title
Russell’s previous fight: Gary Russell Jr vs Oscar Escandon
Diaz’s previous fight: Joseph Diaz vs Victor Terrazas
Diaz’s next fight: Joseph Diaz vs Jesus M Rojas
Russell’s next fight: Gary Russell Jr vs Kiko Martinez
Russell vs Diaz full fight video:
(Free embeddable video hosted on Dailymotion and not uploaded by AllTheBestFights)
amateur cam – we hope to find a better video
Official highlights
tango2042 
Olivier Veillette 
Arjay Cee 
Mattsnow 
highly skilled guys.
good fight
It really was!
I’d love to see Russell Jr. fight Lomachenko again.
Arjay Cee: It will be a very nice fight but in my opinion Loma will succeed again since his moves in the ring are second to none and he punch much harder than these two boxers. JoJo was a good target because confronted him too frontal. Loma will not do that for sure.
I agree with your keen analysis, Tango.
What fights are you currently looking forward to? I personally can’t wait for the return of the masterful Bud Crawford next month. I have family in that part of the country; everyone there is wild for him, including people who can’t stand boxing, haha!
That version of Russell, throwing a hundred imprecise punchs per round, would only give Lomachenko more opportunities to counter him!
No doubt! I just love Russell’s style, but there is an answer to it as you say.
I take it you saw the bad news today about Loma. With luck he’ll make a full recovery—and, based on the Linares win, he may be able to remain dominant even if he doesn’t regain full usage. We’ll see. What the boxing gods giveth, they also taketh away…
That is sad indeed, not only for him but also for the fans. I will need time to recover and he will clearly need a couple of tune-up fights before Linares rematch. This will push back a possible fight between Garcia and him also.. Guess we’ll have to wait until 2020 to see that one.
This was a really good fight.
Very entertaining battle between two excellent technical fighters. i fully agree with the score from two of the judges but the third one was fully biased and an useless judge. I was very surprise to see JoJo winning just only 3 rounds being the second his best. Rusell’s incredible speed and excellent jab did the miracle since apart from Loma, JoJo most likely was his second best opponent. Undoubtedly, a great win for the champion.
Even though both guys are not heavy punchers, I thought Diaz landed the most significant shots. Russell’s jabs and combos are more like popcorn to me, more like show shining stuff, not hitting at a very high %. Yes I deserved to win, he had a good strategy, that is to be first all the time and to overwhelm Diaz with a very fast pace fight. Diaz was never hurt, but I think he wasn’t prepared for that kind of tactic from Russell. Looking at the compubox stats, 115-113 seemed a bit to close indeed, as Bernstein pointed out, round by round, you have to give Russell a greater edge. I had the fight 116-112.